WHEN EVERYBODY WORE A HAT

Between portrait photos taken almost nine decades apart, Steig crustily introduces his Mom, his Pop, and his childhood world—a world where “there were almost no electric lights, cars or telephones—and definitely no TV.” Like his prose, his cartoons are sketchy and childlike, passing with a turn of the page from a gory, imagined battlefield scene to views of the janitor’s tough-looking dog and other neighborhood pets. He barely shows or mentions siblings, friends, or his Bronx neighborhood—and even younger viewers will notice that, despite the title, many of his figures are hatless. So what will children get from this? Next to that whippersnapper James Stevenson’s When I Was Nine (1986), but still distant, generation, not much more than the bare hint that Steig, too, was young. (Picture book. 6-8)